BReel
by BigPink
Summary: Sam and Dean get reacquainted over art films and sex and a cursed film theater. COMPLETE in four parts. Pay attention to warnings in part 1, thanks.
1. Chapter 1

B-Reel

**B-Reel**

**Summary**: Sam and Dean get reacquainted over art films and sex and a cursed film theater.

**What it is**: A complete Season One fic in 4 parts, drama, humor, slightly cracky. I think I can still call this gen. Probably. Rated…PG-13? Maybe more? R seems excessive and yet?

**Warning number one: ** This contains some naughty bits. I'm giving you fair warning, I hesitate to even describe what the hell this is –there's tons of swearing and goofy boy banter and bonding. And probably bondage. And sex (eventually) with things that aren't even, like _human_. It's TENTACLE fic, God help me! A Sweet Charity contribution for extraonions, who has waited altogether too damn long for this. No need to feel squeamish about tentacleporn, girl! It's great prompt. (Erhm, that said, you'll likely find this suggestive rather than raunchy)

**Warning number two: ** Hey, the first one wasn't enough? This warning is about spoilers for movies that you may not have already seen. Those movies are: _Le Retour de Martin Guerre, Spirited Away, Paprika/The Host,_ and _Y Tu Mama Tambien._ Some of these are my favorite movies EVER, so I really suggest that you see them.

Thanks to lemmypie for listening to me jabber on and on and on about movies, and to sasquashme for the cogent and gentle edits. Together, they make me make sense. Thanks also to extraonions for her patience and her imagination.

-:-:-

Part One/Melodrama

-:-:-

The sun streamed into Duckworth's Pet Emporium, feathers everywhere, floating blue and green and yellow, like an Easter basket had exploded. Sam sort of liked budgies, which would have made the whole thing really tragic if it weren't so damn _freaky_.

Sam edged down the littered aisle, the distinctive smell of wet wood shavings and guinea pig dung causing him to grimace. Feathers stuck to the dried spill of blood slanting across the cement floor, draining into a grate designed for waste water and animal urine. He remembered the budgie from his kindergarten class, though he hadn't been allowed to take it home, not after the unfortunate hamster incident. An exhalation at his shoulder, unexpected, and Sam still didn't know how someone so quintessentially noisy as his brother moved so damn silently.

"Fuck me. Fucking canaries."

A policeman, busy with a camera, looked up quickly and Dean smiled wide, nodding. So sure of himself Sam despaired. The police tape hadn't bothered Dean, who'd said that they were cousins of the store's owner, hospitalized with an honest-to-God heart attack after the morning's rampage. "Budgies," Sam corrected him.

Dean shrugged, unaware or uncaring of the difference, Sam couldn't tell. "So," his voice carried, like Dad's did, and that put iron in Sam's back, "What did Mister - uh - Woltz do to provoke the attack? I mean, what could you possibly do to piss off that many budgies?"

The policeman, battered and worn as a bus station paperback, glanced up at the brief chortle in Dean's voice. "You're the pet store guys. You tell me." And went back to his grim job.

Sam slipped a broad hand under Dean's elbow, the warm sun heating up the store, the air conditioning turned off or non-existent — though who would lack a/c in the Central Valley was beyond Sam — animal reek mixing with that of blood. He remembered suddenly, mercilessly, that Jessica had loved pet stores, had forced him into them regularly, oohing and aahing over the puppies and the kittens. Even at the time, unaware how this hunting life would snag him again, Sam had stared at the cute little bundles of big eyes and fur, thought 'bait', and moved on to the terrariums, where he'd studied the lazy coils of snake and unblinking gaze of gekko, wondering how people could think of all of them as simply pets.

More forcibly than was probably advisable, Sam dragged his brother out into the shabby main street, the Temblor Range a mere smudge on the sandy horizon, and the afternoon sun might as well have been a club. California, Sam could do, had done. But the coast, the _water_, please. Not this interior heat, this semi-arid desert, the kind that cracked the earth, reduced alkali wetland to shimmering sheets of sulphate and salt.

"Buttonwillow," Dean muttered, clearly unfazed by heat or death or police tape. He shook Sam off, an afterthought. "Fuck me," he said again.

"I wonder where they went," Sam puzzled aloud, heading back toward the black Impala, so hot he could almost see the mirage of heat radiating from its hood.

Dean pulled open the car door, hesitated, sweat softing a dark vee blossom on his red t-shirt. It looked like blood. Sam's mouth twitched. Dean rarely hesitated, so Sam presumed the Impala's interior was too hot, even for him. "Who the hell calls a town Buttonwillow? That's a damn stripper's name." He squinted and pulled his sunglasses to his nose. "Where who went?"

"The budgies," Sam said mournfully, resigning himself to the car.

They were on the Carrizo Plain, and oil derricks bobbed across it like those stupid glass dippy birds sold in tourist trinket stores across America. Despite this, gas was expensive, but even Dean wouldn't chance running dry in a place this devoid of interesting distractions. It took less than three minutes to traverse the McKittrick Highway through Buttonwillow before finding a gas station so dusty it looked derelict, faded yellow ribbons hanging on a single dead-looking willow, a tired flag languishing on an aluminum pole.

Dean slid out like butter from a hot pan, unhooked the nozzle from its cradle, loath to let anyone pump gas in the car but him. Sam knew this, had observed this over the last few months. It was too hot to sit in the car; besides, Sam needed something liquid. His insides were sticking to each other, might have been hung with flypaper. Dean yelled for a Coke as Sam knocked dust from his boots — pavement wasn't heard of in Buttonwillow, apparently — and Sam lifted a hand in acknowledgment without looking back. The bell above the door rattled, didn't ring, its clapper lost in some unmarked altercation. Sam grabbed two Cokes from the cooler, pressed one against the sweating side of his neck.

"Hot," a voice said from behind the counter and Sam startled. No one was there. Then a woman stood up, armful of cigarette cartons piled to her chin.

"Yeah," Sam agreed.

She stared at the Impala and Dean through the window, a fan humming behind her, stirring air like a pot of re-heated porridge. "Haven't seen you boys here before, and you sure the hell don't look like rig pigs. You're here about what happened at Duckworths, aren't you?" she asked. Her hair was pulled back, sweat-darkened blonde. Sam nodded. It was the sort of news item to draw strangers. She turned and dumped the cartons on the counter. "I tell you, from what I hear, Woltz had it coming to him." She squinted at Sam, sizing him up, hands on hips. She was little, skinny as a stray cat, eyes just the same green. "You reporters? I'm Laurel."

Sam set the drinks on the counter beside the pyramid of Kools and scratched his neck. His skin was Coke-cold for a moment, then faded to warm damp. "Sam. No, we're not reporters. But you don't hear a radio report about a guy getting pecked to death by budgies and not check it out." At least, Dean didn't. Sam had been all for just getting the hell out of the state; Dad had been long gone by the time they'd arrived in Sacramento. They'd received no more coordinates from their father, no contact of course. After the Burkittsville debacle, Dean had no excuse for _not_ going to Sacramento, just as Sam had no excuse for _not_ checking out budgies-gone-bad.

Both leads would probably end up nowhere. Except —

"What about Woltz?" he asked, watching Dean wrestle with the gas hose. It wanted to bend around him, and Dean was stepping out of its coils, nozzle in hand, a fine golden spray of gas droplets scattering around him. Finally, his brother got the nozzle back into the gas pump. He wiped both hands on his chest, shaking his head.

She was starved for company, that much was evident. Laurel leaned forward, almost conspiratorially, like this was a campfire story. "Yeah, he owned the Melodrama, over on Lux Avenue. That theater's bad news, that's what they say. Cursed." She drew the word out like the toffee center of a cheap chocolate. "Woltz and his partner shoulda stuck to the oldies." She flipped a strand of hair behind her ear, scratched the side of her face with nails long past their last manicure.

"Why?" Sam asked, glancing out as Dean walked slowly toward the door, legs like a cowboy. "How did Woltz fit in?" Just as Dean came in, eyes flicking to the broken bell like it offended him.

Laurel shrugged, gave Dean an appraising glance so scorching that a bad case of heat stroke was probably the least of their worries. "Well, he wasn't from around here. I think he owned theaters across the Valley and thought that bringing in shit like _Pirates of the Caribbean_ was a good idea."

Dean's brows said it all: _It's not?_

"Blockbusters don't do well in Buttonwillow?" Sam queried, hoping that Dean wouldn't comment.

Laurel fidgeted with her hands. "Well, Marty and I, we used to drive in to Bakersfield if we wanted a blockbuster. The Melodrama, though? I been living here almost ten years, and it always plays that foreign shit. Or black and white stuff. Or did till Woltz and his partner took over last month."

Dean gestured to the pump. "How painful's it gonna be?" and spun the question on the edge of a grin, finger to Frisbee. Laurel grinned back, despite the wedding ring winking on her restless finger.

It hadn't changed in years, this look, and the accompanying tone, but it still made the hair on Sam's neck stand at attention. He'd admired this look of Dean's at one time, practiced it in front of the mirror of whatever dingy motel Dad had named 'home-for-a-week'. Been _caught_ practicing it. Sam had forgotten nothing over the years, but that didn't mean he _liked_ to remember.

Laurel wasn't exactly a hard case, either. One hand, the one with the ring, touched her bedraggled hair, drifted to a pendant affixed with sweat to the skin just above the neckline of her sleeveless shirt. Her fingers fell to the waistband of her jeans, and Sam turned his back, leaned against the counter and gave Dean a baleful stare.

Dean didn't even meet his eyes. "This your station?" he asked like he was giving her a compliment and he probably was.

"My husband's," she said with a smile in her voice, and Sam was happy he wasn't looking. "But he went MIA just outside of Fallujah, so I don't talk about Marty much anymore."

"Huh," Dean grunted, leaning across the counter and fishing his wallet out from his back pocket like his fingers had just discovered the sleaziest place on the planet.

"Okay," Sam launched himself away from the counter like he was starting a race. "Two Cokes, too." He glanced back and watched Laurel slide Dean's credit card out from the wallet as Dean watched. It had all the makings of soft porn on late-night cable. "Which way's the Melodrama?"

Somehow, that wasn't the weirdest thing to have come out his mouth today. That might have been, "No, I don't want to check out the killer budgies, Dean."

And that hadn't done him a bit of good, either.

-:-:-

Dean put Laurel right out of his mind in the few short minutes it took to find the Melodrama. Shit, this day was getting better and better. Killer parakeets and a creepy movie theater that killed anyone who tried to change the art-house playlist. Almost made coming to California worth it. Leaving Burkittsville, Dean had made a half-hearted argument to Sam that Dad would be long gone from Sacramento, but he didn't want his brother to think that he wasn't trying, at least. Trying to be reasonable. Accommodating. Not suffering from your typical hunter psychosis. This could be okay, this new thing they had going, if only Sam understood that working together meant working, together.

The next damn gig _would_ have to be California, though, wouldn't it? But the lure of the potentially haunted Melodrama outweighed the risk of Sam remembering that some sort of life was still possible back in Palo Alto. Besides, it was the kind of old theater you just didn't see anymore, with neon that probably didn't work, a boarded up ticket kiosk protruding onto the sidewalk, and vitrine cases with posters from movies made when their dad was young. Above, the marquee sign read, _Under New Management: Pirates of the Caribbean 2,_ except the 2 was a Z and 'management' was so badly spelled even Dean could tell it was wrong.

Something was going on, though, because even as they pulled up, two men were manhandling an aluminum ladder against the sign, the skinnier of the two with a plastic bucket slung over his arm, full of letters. As Dean and Sam got out the car, they could hear the shouting from across the desolate street.

"Just take it down! Take it down!" Mouth working even when he wasn't saying anything, the shouter turned as Dean approached, eyes narrow in a bloated face, ginger mustache moving of its own accord.

"But I don't have enough letters for-" but whatever the message was supposed to be was lost as the skinny guy shinnied up the ladder, rattling like a spoon in a tin cup.

"Did we miss it?" Dean said, pointing to the poster. A tentacle waved menacingly over a tiny galleon.

The shorter man dragged his forearm across his sweaty brow. "Wasn't the right market."

"I hear it's popular in other parts of the country," Sam countered evenly. "Not here?"

The man huffed a little, pink. "Not here. Never here." He looked over his shoulder, into the dark recesses of the theater. "We only play quality movies — I mean films! — here." Then, he finally seemed to notice them. Dean knew what he looked like to someone like this, same as he knew how he had come across to Laurie at the gas station. Laura. Laurel. Whatever.

The not-so-far-from-porcine man squinted at Dean. "What do you want?"

Desperate, and moneyed. The kind of combination that Dean had been taught to exploit. "We hear you might have a problem with your theater. We specialize in…problems."

Drumming up business in their line of work didn't mean taking out ads, it meant showing up when weird things happened. And this guy, in Dean's opinion, was ready to hear the sales pitch.

"Can we go inside?" Sam asked, and hoped sparked in Dean: maybe there would be air conditioning.

No luck. A fan turned drowsily in the corner of the office. Buddy Bourne, the man with the mustache, ushered them in, introduced himself as 'one of the new owners' and Dean said, "You mean, the only owner," and Buddy turned even more pink.

Sam, who looked as though sweat wasn't something he was going to do today, sank into the leather chair with proprietorial ease, one ankle across one knee, fingers stroking the upholstery as though it was a spaniel's sleek head. "Your partner, Woltz? What happened?"

Buddy had the immediate nerve to say 'an accident', but that didn't last long. Sam, Dean had cause to know, possessed a withering gaze. "Jack and me, we've made a career out of this, right? This is what we do, turning around failing theaters, and we've made a lot of coin. It's not as though this is the first time we've changed a theater's format."

"First time for cockatoos to take Jack apart in a pet store though, I'm guessing," Dean interceded. Good cop, bad cop, a play as old as the hills. This Buddy doughboy knew what was what. He was scared shitless.

"It was an-"

"A whole pet store goes apeshit and attacks your business partner, right after you take ownership?" Dean leaned forward in the chair. "You say 'accident' one more time, and I'm gonna jam my thumbs into your eye sockets."

Buddy's mouth shut. Beside Dean, Sam's fingers no longer drifted on the armrest; they stilled on leather worn thin as tissue. Concentrating, making a decision. _C'mon, Sammy, like riding a bike. _

Then, like it hurt him to say it, "How long's the movie theater been haunted?"

One blink. Two. "Since '95, we think."

_Huh, so doing some independent research, are you Sam? _ Just as long as Sam remembered that 'working together' also meant 'sharing information'. Dean had been hunting with his father for more than a decade; hunting with Sam for mere months. There were rules and one of those was never act surprised in front of a client, so he didn't.

Sam continued. "So, why is this happening now?"

Buddy shrugged slightly, sweat darkening wide circles under his cotton short-sleeved button up. "We went to big screen commercial hits. Either that or shut this puppy down. It's the only way to make money in this day and age. We can't be playing those art-house flicks, not in Nowheresville, California."

In a strange way, watching Sam work this was reassuring. _You like it, Sammy. Don't tell me you don't like it. _ Something similar to pride filled him, but it also might have been relief.

"Let me guess. The last movie before you pulled the plug and went Johnny Depp on the town?" Dean turned to see Sam's brow raised. But he knew. They all knew, or could have guessed. Ghosts were nothing if not predictable.

"Hitchcock's _The Birds,_" Buddy sighed. "Please help me. I don't want to die."

"Who do we talk to?" Dean asked, and tried to imagine what kind of feast pudgy Buddy Bourne would make for a bunch of birds.

Turned out they needed to talk to Alf and Leni, because they'd been working the Melodrama for twenty years. Dean couldn't figure out how you worked with someone for twenty years without jumping their bones, but Alf assured him that he'd never 'felt that way' about Leni, even though Leni was a babe and Alf looked as though he could use some action. Across the lobby, Sam bent down to talk with Leni, who was loading the popcorn machine. Alf — the skinny guy with all the letters — squirmed like he had chiggers in his pants. Maybe asking Alf if he was banging the popcorn girl wasn't the best leading question, but Dean reckoned his job wasn't to make anyone comfortable.

"There's a ghost here? Like, a real ghost?" he slipped into Alf's stuttering surprise, and it caused Alf to get positively agitated.

"No! God, no, no ghost. I don't know what-"

And then heard, from right across the lobby, Leni's voice, responding to Sam's similar line of questioning, "Oh, hell yes, big damn ghost won't leave us the hell alone."

Dean raised both brows. _ Go on, Alf._

"Okay, so there's a ghost."

"Sure it's not just you who doesn't like the switch to pirates and superheroes? Maybe make Woltz's death look like an accident?"

Alf's long face twisted, talking about ghosts apparently preferable to admitting murder. "No. Of course not. It's just Lucky again. He won't leave us alone," and was going to say something that would have earned him a PG-13 rating, but held back.

Leni, across the lobby still, didn't. "That fucker was a fucking psychopath who didn't know how to handle rejection! Now look at him!" and stared around the lobby like Lucky the Ghost was going to come zooming out of the woodwork like one of Casper's uncles.

Everyone looked around. So much for conducting separate interviews. Dean jerked his nose towards the concession stand.

Coming up to the counter, Alf in mournful tow, Dean asked, "Okay, so who's Lucky?"

"He was a good guy-" Alf started.

Leni, eyes icy blue beneath short dark bangs that made her look like a World War II pinup, snapped some gum behind red lips. "Lucio Jorge was a certified nutjob. Killed himself when his girlfriend dumped him."

Alf swayed a little, weight going from foot to foot. His hair, Dean noticed, fuzzed straight up. He'd have had a hard time getting a hat on that mess. "He was a good guy," he reiterated, softly. "He went to film school, trained as a projectionist. He came up here for a summer, started the theater on all sorts of foreign films, stuff with subtitles. See, there's a huge Latino population around here, so lots of Spanish flicks, Pedro Almodovar, Robert Rodriguez and whatnot. _El Mariachi,_ Rodriguez, not _Spy Kids_," Alf explained like Dean had seen either of them.

"_From Dusk 'Til Dawn_, Dean," Sam translated.

"Hack," Dean coughed into his fist.

"We did okay," Alf directed that at Leni, who was rolling her eyes.

"Every weekend a different 'festival'. Christ, I got sick of festivals." Her fingernails were painted black. "Lucky was a runty sex maniac who couldn't take it when Ana said 'adios'. He sparked up the projector after everyone left, ran his favorite flick, and jumped off the balcony with a rope around his neck. We were the ones that found him," and her forefinger drew a line between herself and Alf, possibly the only connection they had. Other than working in a dusty movie theater for decades.

"So," Sam asked. "Favorite film? Let me guess — _Cinema Paradiso_."

Like that mattered on any planet. "Sam, could you and Alf come up with your Top Ten some other time?" Dean turned to Leni, who at least seemed to care about the problem at hand. "Why the hell did you play all this old shit if it wasn't making money?"

"Mrs. Lawford, the old owner, loved Lucky's ass, and she kept up the goddamn festivals. When she died last year, we kept to the program. But when Woltz and Bourne took over, we had the chance to try something new. And look what happens."

Sam's brow furrowed, and Dean could almost see the wheels turning. "Did Lucky show up before now?"

Leni looked uncomfortable for once, and Alf was the one who grinned. "Don't let Leni snow you. She likes the old ones, the noir stuff." Leni shot him daggers and Alf chuckled. "You do," but not unkindly. "Sometimes, you're watching a movie and you feel him. Cold. Sitting near you. Never does anything, never really would come right out. But he could tell when you were enjoying the show."

Sam looked like he was fighting a smile. "How did things change when the new owners took over?"

"Well," Leni said, "we've tried changing the movies before, tried some American avant-garde, but Lucky doesn't like that either. The machines were wrecked in the morning, or the projector would keep jamming. Cold drafts that weren't there before."

Alf took up the story. "But nothing like switching to _Pirates of the Caribbean_."

Leni sniffed. "I like Johnny Depp."

"Opinions differ. For sure Orlando Bloom can't act his way out of a paper bag," Alf countered. "And don't get me started on that sell-out, Geoffrey Rush."

"People," Dean said, holding up a hand. "Please."

Alf cleared his throat, apparently willing to forget sketchy acting abilities. "First night of the new program, we started to find dead rats everywhere."

Leni shuddered. "That was last week." She glanced behind her. "Then a dead rabbit in the popcorn maker."

"I kept hearing banging in the projectionist's booth, but no one was there." Alf jammed his hands into his pockets. "It was only a matter of time. And even though Lucky was a good guy, knew movie trivia like no one else, he wasn't exactly, uh. Stable." He looked nervous. "A little nuts, really."

"You don't say," Dean murmured. "Only one more question, guys." They looked at him. Enough of this. Cut to the chase. "Where's he buried?"

-:-:-

"You know," Dean was saying, but Sam was barely listening, mostly because he knew that small town cops loved to bust young guys desecrating gravesites, and someone had to stand look-out, "the worst thing about goddamn ghosts is they just don't know when to quit."

A spade-full of dirt sprayed over the lip of the grave, and Dean's head bobbed up for a moment, catching the beam of Sam's flashlight full in the face. "Christ!" Dean swore, holding up a hand to block it and Sam deflected the light away without apology. "Just because they have 'unfinished business' or whatever," and he waved his calloused hand around in the air before swiping at his sweating brow, "doesn't give them the right to keep pestering the living. It's not…_healthy_," and bent back to the work at hand.

Dean wouldn't recognize healthy if it sat down and gave him a business card, Sam thought. But he had to hand it to his brother: he'd never seen anyone dig a grave faster. Not that much competitive grave-digging had been going on at Stanford. Try putting that on a resume.

"I know if I was buried in this goddamn armpit of a town, I'd get the fuck…out…of here…as soon-" and the shovel hit wood. "Phew!" came from the hole.

Sam bent down to give Dean better light; not a single car had passed in the two hours they'd been here. Sam figured either they were due for a cop to swing by, or no one gave a good goddamn about the dead in this town. "Guess no one wanted to pony up and send his bones back to Uruguay."

Dean's head popped back up, like a meerkat on the Kalahari. "I thought it was Paraguay?"

Sam lifted a shoulder and let it drop. It didn't matter. "Might have been Bolivia." He trained the flashlight onto the dirt-covered lid. Dean didn't seem to mind doing the heavy lifting. In fact, Dean had yanked the shovel out of Sam's hands without a word, had started digging and Sam just had to watch. Par for the damn course, Dean acting like Sam was incapable of handling anything more strenuous than opening up the laptop.

The coffin was soon uncovered enough, and Sam handed Dean the crowbar. The lid came up with a screech of iron against wood and Sam winced. That wasn't a sound you got used to, no matter how many times you heard it.

Dean shook his head, a foot on either side of the now-gaping coffin. The dry soil had been kind to the body — Sam shone the light right in and saw that Lucio Jorge was desiccated, not rotting. God, why didn't people get cremated as a matter of course? It would make their job so much easier. Actually, it might make their job redundant. Strange that Sam couldn't quite decide if that was a good thing or not.

Dean made a quick survey to ensure that all body parts were there, as much as you could with a flashlight and limited time. It was closer to dawn than midnight, and Dean declared he was getting hungry, just before he asked for the jerrycan. Typical first-response: torch the damn body. See if that cleared things up. Maybe worked a quarter of the time, but always worth the effort. Damn, Sam had forgotten how much of this job was tedium and dirt.

As Dean untwisted the cap, Sam heard him say, "What's so bad about a few pirates?" followed by the slosh and splash of the can being emptied.

"Movies like that have no nutritional value whatsoever. Mindless brain candy," Sam replied, the gas fumes wafting into the night air. _Dammit, he likes being down in a confined space, surrounded by noxious fumes._

"Yeah," Dean's voice came, earth-muted. "That's what I mean."

The jerrycan was passed back up empty and Sam handed down the bag of road salt that Dean kept in the trunk. It had been around since winter, when they'd stolen a dozen or more bags from a parked city salt truck in Utah. Sam watched as Dean thumped it against his knee to break up the crystallized chunks that had formed over the last few months. "This our last bag?" he asked. "It's gonna be a bitch to find more out of season." He stood up, put both elbows on the edge of the grave, legs scissored over the open coffin. "I mean. The bony chick's pretty hot, and that octopus thing was fucking great. Really realistic," like he knew about giant squid. "And Depp was _awesome_."

"Dean," Sam warned, just as a cool breeze sheered across his shoulders.

One hand lifted, then fell to the earthen edge. "Some people just want all this angst with their entertainment. Why does it always have to be with the blahblahblah and the teary goodbyes. Why can't people just stuff their faces with popcorn and Twizzlers and have some fun?"

"Dean, get out of the grave."

Dean's mouth twitched, Sam saw that familiar look of annoyance in the suddenly flickering light, damn guy never liked anything resembling an order coming from anyone but Dad. But that was before Sam was thrown back away from the grave, an opaque white fog forming around him, blue and becoming a bruising solid in mere seconds. The air exited his lungs with an excitable whoosh, and the rapidly-condensing ghost moved off Sam and into the grave itself. Before he had time to shout a warning, Sam heard Dean swearing. From the bottom of the hole. Heard cursing and the splintering of wood and the sound of flesh meeting dirt.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, scrambling to the edge, one hand reaching in, like sticking your arm into the piranha pool at the aquarium. It was freezing cold in there and though Sam could see nothing — not ghost nor brother - his hand found Dean's ear, then his hair, and Dean's hand wrapped around Sam's wrist like it was a lifeline. Which maybe it was.

Sam hauled for all he was worth, and Dean came up out of the hole in one piece, swearing, sprawled on top of Sam like he was a queen-sized bed at a Super 8. Just for a moment, then he was off, scrambling around for the box of matches, and the ghost came howling out, man-shaped in the soft edge of dawn. The ghost of Lucky Jorge passed over Sam like a gulp of menthol mouthwash across tongue, right over and on to Dean, pushing him across the gravel as Sam watched, like someone would squish a bug.

The saltgun lay by the duffle, but the box of matches was closer. Sam grabbed them, slid open the cardboard, broke the first match against the grit of scratch paper. The next one took and he threw it into the open grave. For one second, nothing happened, and Sam rolled to the duffle, hand reaching for the saltgun. And then, the familiar non-sound of oxygen sucking flame and a sheet of blue fire shot from the pit like a moon launch.

Dean, breathing raggedly against the ground, smothered by the phosphorous ghost glow so present Sam could read Lucky's t-shirt — Buttonwillow Fun Run 1992 — shouted, "Get off!" and rose to his elbows. Lucky slid sideways, fizzling like a television with bad reception, the smell of gas and dirt and ozone tight around them all. "You're no Patrick Swayze and I'm sure as shit not Demi Moore!"

The grave flames were dying down, and the sun was lipping the eastern ridge. In the poor and changing light, Sam couldn't tell if the damn spirit was on its way out or what. His brother sat fully up, the ghostly light hovering. "Come and get it," Dean said, low in his throat, a Pit Bull with laryngitis. He'd cut his lip at some point in the tussle; it bled freely down his chin. "I ain't making clay pots with your ghostly ass, Casper."

Maybe it was because he'd brought up love from beyond the cinematic grave. Maybe it was because Dean had poured the gas and spread the salt. Perhaps it was because he'd been talking about the relative merits of pirate movies, or that he'd brought up the horrifying prospect of Whoopi Goldberg however obliquely. Whatever the case, the ghost of Lucio Jorge gathered strength and streamed over Dean's semi-prone body, knocking him flat like a blacksmith's hammer, leaving Sam no choice.

Hand curled around the shotgun, trigger finger happy as shit, Sam squeezed.

No mistaking it — dawn had arrived, and by its glow, Sam watched Lucky the ghost dissipate in an explosion of electrical force, a dispersal of plasma into the earth, excited electrons relaxing into an altered state. Going to ground, in the most elemental way possible.

Sam realized he was breathing hard. "I think we'll have to come up with a Plan B."

Dean got to his feet slowly, looked down at himself, fingers gingerly exploring his torso, making sure he didn't have any new holes. "Yeah, boy genius. No shit."

Sam took two steps and peered into the smoldering grave. All was blackened sticks. He knew whose job it was going to be, filling it back in. Some things didn't change, no matter what.

-:-:-


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two/The Old Switcheroo

-:-:-

"I can't believe you talked me into this," Dean said for maybe the fiftieth time.

Sam turned, watched Dean stuff a handful of popcorn in his mouth, dim lighting not concealing the fact that half of it was on Dean's chest, kernels resting between the folds of his t-shirt, a couple on his lap. "And _I _can't believe you're eating popcorn from the same bin where Thumper bought it," Sam replied, relaxing back into the seat.

The Melodrama was almost half-full, not a bad turnout for Buttonwillow on a Friday night, Sam reckoned. Buddy Bourne had let Alf the projectionist/ticket taker set the schedule for the weekend while the Winchesters determined if they'd gotten lucky with Lucky. Their salt and burn last night didn't feel like it had worked, but Sam knew weirder things happened. That last blast of Lucky's, when he'd gone after Dean, didn't exactly feel like, 'Goodbye, going to Hell now, won't forget to write'. Still, Sam could hope. One way to find out, and Alf was willing to chance it, had the movies spooling up in the booth.

"I never sit through two movies," Dean went on. Yeah, _right_. "Especially when one is dubbed."

That, Sam could believe.

Sam looked at the photocopied flyer in his hand; Leni had been giving them out in the lobby. _Remake Festival!_ the header screamed. Leni hadn't looked happy, looked as though she had a mouth full of tacks and was on her way to a watermelon seed spitting contest.

"So, Alf's theory is — what, again?"

"Double feature — _Retour de Martin Guerre,_ then _Sommersby_. First one's the European original. The other is a Hollywood remake." A group of older folks mixed with students, definitely a busy night. "Lucky will be all happy with the French one, will show up just because people are liking it, and then the remake will get him mad enough to take on the same kinda form we saw last night. Ghost shows up, we spring the exorcism into action." He jostled the duffle at his feet with one boot. They'd already put hex bags into the walls at all cardinal points, including the entrance to the projection booth. Like a lobster in a trap, Lucky would be able to get in, would get mad, and then the hex bags would keep him locked in long enough to exorcise.

Dean snatched the flyer out of Sam's hands. "So, if we're getting rid of Lucky tonight, why are we getting more of this foreign shit for the rest of the weekend?" He passed the paper back, smearing it with a long streak of butter-flavored topping. "Shouldn't Buddy program pirates and whatnot?"

Sam folded the flyer, put it in the pocket of his jean jacket. "Guess Buddy doesn't have much faith in our abilities." _Can't imagine why._

The dubbing was particularly bad, it turned out, not just because the synchronization was off, but because the English-language actor whose voice replaced that of the French actor was a joke — high, almost squeaky. Coming from a big guy like Gerard Depardieu. Dean kept snickering, didn't seem to remember or care that a dead rabbit had been found in the popcorn maker last week, ate the whole bag.

About a quarter of the way through, he leaned over to Sam and said in a loud whisper, "Don't tell me she can't figure out that this guy's not her husband."

Sam glared at him. He'd seen this one before, years ago, with Jessica. "Shh."

"I mean," not even whispering now, "I think she just wants to get laid. Am I right?" He put his boots up on the seat in front of him. Sam slid further down into his seat. "Hey, why doesn't that dude with the stupid hat just make him take a lie detector test?"

"Because it's the Middle Ages," Sam hissed.

"Cool." Dean waited for a quiet moment in the film, then crunched up his empty bag of popcorn. "Is Robin Hood in this one? Do they shoot some shit with bows and arrows? Maybe with a trebuchet?" Trust Dean to know what a trebuchet was, and not to figure out that medieval France didn't have technology like lie detectors. Sam despaired at Dean's problematic relationship with history.

"Robin Hood was English," Sam muttered.

"We're not in England?" Dean asked, loudly. "They're speaking English. Sort of."

Someone behind them shushed, and Dean's brow scrunched up. Not a good tactic, shushing Dean. It always led to an escalation of hostilities.

By the time the credits rolled, and Martin Guerre was exposed as a fraud and hanged until dead, Sam and Dean had a whole section to themselves. People had given up shushing, had just moved. Dean threw his hands up in the air. "So they just — _killed_ him? Bastards! Fuck, the stuff writers make up."

Sam, head resting against his interlaced fingers, leaned over the empty seat in front of them, then spoke into the thick air. "It's a true story."

Silence behind. "You're shitting me," finally.

Sam turned. As a kid, he'd always loved going to movies with Dean, mostly because he brought so much enthusiasm to the venture — talked to the screen, laughed loudly, even memorably screamed once. That had been _Jurassic Park,_ if Sam remembered correctly. As an adult, though? Maybe not quite the same thing. Still, the look on Dean's face made their theater pariah status almost worth it. Dean was, improbably, _invested_.

"No, I'm not. This peasant marries young, goes off to war, never returns. What's his widow gonna do? Finally, the guy comes back, older, remembers all the right stuff, takes up where they left off."

"Things like that only happen in movies, not in real life." Dean seemed to be waiting for Sam's shrug. When Sam gave it to him, Dean didn't drop it like Sam thought he would. "Except he's nicer than the old guy." Dean cocked his head. "The young guy. The other guy. Whatever."

Sam grinned. "Yeah."

"So, how'd they catch him? In real life?"

Sam looked at the silent screen, knew they had about ten minutes before the Hollywood version started. Alf was cleaning up the aisles. "What you saw. The village cobbler had kept a form of the young guy's foot and realized the new guy had a different shoe size. Your feet don't _shrink_ as you get older. Plus, the real Martin Guerre showed up during the trial."

"You're shitting me!" Dean repeated.

"Scout's honor." Over his heart. "They'd been friends in the war, that's how the other guy knew all the stories."

"Huh." Dean stood, stretched. "So, Lucky likes this kind of talky mistaken identity stuff. Not enough action for me, though the hanging was kinda cool. What about this next one?"

Alf came close, looked up, his frizzy hair rising like a column of smoke. "It's awful," he warned them. He looked a little scared at his own presumption for suggesting it.

Sam stood next to Dean, scanned the theater, but everything looked fine, no cold spots, nothing odd at all. "Yeah," he said, satisfied that Lucky, if he was here, was happy enough. "It's set in the American Civil War with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster."

Dean raised both eyebrows. "Hey, Jodie Foster." He paused, hitched his shoulder with a cautious grin. "You think…" Both Sam and Alf stopped him with identical looks, knowing what he was going to ask. "What?"

The second half of the double feature was bad, suffered in comparison just as Sam had feared. It had been difficult to concentrate on ghosts during the first movie; it was impossible to concentrate on the movie during the second. His attention kept wandering, trying to figure out when and where Lucky was going to show up.

About half an hour in, the film skipped, stopped, and a huge burn erupted on the screen as the film melted on the frame and slowly caught fire. Sam heard Alf calling from the projector room, his voice tight: "Don't worry everyone! Don't panic!" Which was sort of like shushing Dean; it didn't work, it just made things worse.

The crowd got to its feet _en masse_, and made for the exits, issuing a sound not unlike cattle heading off for the processing plant.

Sam sighed. Lucky wasn't making an appearance; he was just shutting down production. "Yeah, so. Plan B, I guess."

"I think we're actually at Plan C, Jimmy Neutron." Dean grabbed the bag at their feet, got up, darted a glance to the backs of fleeing audience members, and withdrew the salt gun. He checked the load. "Your hex bags are crap; he was supposed to come down here, not make an appearance in the projection booth." It had been a point of contention, the ingredients Sam had used in the bags. Dean had said that crushed Alka Seltzer tablets weren't an adequate replacement for naturally-occurring natron. Sam had disagreed, said that the _Compendium of Rituals_ had been current some time right around the last Salem witch trials and that modern alternatives would do the trick. "I'll go up there, try to lure him into the Solomon Circle, and you make sure no one gets trampled to death."

Sam didn't like it when Dean was right. The hex bags ought to have worked, but then again, so should have the salt and burn from last night. Theory was shit in this business, and nothing was the same twice. It was all a shot in the dark, literally.

Just then, as Sam realized Dean was laughing at him, he saw Lucky in the row behind, face all sort of fallen in and splotched an ugly blue, tongue lolling, his head flopping to one side. "Dean!" Sam shouted, and Dean turned, bringing the gun up.

Too late. Lucky threw Dean five rows into the old orchestra pit, and then rushed toward him, a blur of phosphorescent ghost trail, and Sam rummaged in the duffle, drawing out an iron bar, the salt gun having clattered to a location somewhere under the raked seating.

With an arc like lightning, he swung the tire iron right through Lucky's ghostly ass, because the unquiet spirit was banging Dean's head against the cement floor and Sam thought that he ought to stop it, no matter how often Sam felt like doing it himself from time to time. Lucky hissed, and evaporated like water on a hot skillet. The silence was punctuated by the thudding of fleeing feet, and Dean got shakily to his elbows. Sam helped him up, but Dean shook off the hand, rubbing the back of his head. "Fine, I'm fine." He drew a deep breath of air. "But I was enjoying that movie, you pansy-assed bastard!"

Sam turned to him. "Really?"

Dean shrugged. "Really." He examined his fingers for blood. Finding none, he sighed. "Yeah. I don't care which way she swings, I wouldn't kick Jodie Foster out of bed."

-:-:-

Dean phoned Buddy Bourne and told him to hang tight, make sure all his doorways and window sills were protected with lines of salt. Poor bastard would probably be dead by morning and that freak Alf would continue to play badly-dubbed foreign classics for years to come.

Really, if it hadn't been for the dead theater owner, Dean might have said 'enough' and driven off into the sunset.

Well, maybe that and the fact that Lucky had gotten the better of him not once, but twice now, and Dean wasn't in the habit of letting ghosts have the last word. To that end, they hung around the theater until well after midnight, but Lucky didn't seem interested in them any more. Let's face it, Sam had said, we're not the ones setting the programming. And Dean had smiled widely at poor hapless Alf, whose face had blanched. Best salt your doors, too, Dean had cautioned.

"What now?" Sam asked, watching Leni pull the accordion gate across the storefront. After the theater closed for the night, Buttonwillow really became a ghost town and that idea made Dean grin.

Easy for Sam to misinterpret, though. Dean turned, considered the slim options. "Beer?" It was Friday night, after all. Someone, somewhere, had to be cutting loose. "Maybe some action down at…whatever bar's in this godforsaken town." He hadn't been paying attention to the drinking holes when they'd been driving through, not really, but if there was a pet store and a movie theatre, there had to be a bar.

Sam's nose wrinkled. "Drop me off at the motel."

Jesus, was he still sore about that hex bag thing? "Why? You gonna memorize the _Compendium_?" When Sam didn't answer, Dean sighed. "Fine, it's your Friday night, not mine." He smiled again, thinking that getting drunk was exactly what Sam needed, and turned toward the Impala. "Me and the rest of the normal people in this town? We're finding the bar."

He dropped Sam off, who made some excuse about needing to clean out the guns and wanted to get into the trunk, just for a minute, please. In truth, and Dean knew it because he knew his brother inside and out, no matter the intervening years, Sam only wanted to get his stupid Stanford hands on that _Compendium_, didn't he? So Dean let him, didn't rib him about it, because replacing natron with antacid medicine was the sort of mistake that would drive Sam mental.

_Point to me, zero for you, and I win a beer. I'll let you be right tomorrow, Sam._

In Rick's Bar and Grill, Dean recognized the first face he saw.

"Hey, Lauri-a-erl," he stumbled, but didn't get much further than that, not that it mattered.

With a squeak of surprise, or pleasure, or some other ill-defined exclamation, Laurel from the gas station flung herself at Dean with all the restraint of a German Shepherd at a prime rib. Arms around his neck in a death grip, Dean felt her whole weight come off the ground as she wrapped her legs around his hips. Jesus Christ, they were a friendly bunch in Buttonwillow, weren't they?

"I can't believe it! Where did you come from? Why didn't you phone me?" Then she pulled her face away from his neck, looked him in the eyes. Hers were full of tears, but a huge smile covered her face. "Fuck, you're looking good." And then her tongue was drilling for oil in his mouth.

Dean wasn't inclined to second-guess a reception like this. Especially when Laurel — who, yes, had seemed pretty keen on him earlier in the day — apparently wasn't going to stand on niceties, like him getting her name right. He was tired, had been roughed up a little by a stupid art-school ghost and he wanted a beer in the worst way, but he was pretty sure that she probably had beer at her place.

They didn't make it out of the parking lot before things went way south, south in the really great sense of the word, south in the way of Sergio Leone Westerns, south in the sense of abandon, of drink, of girls with flowers in their hair and beckoning red lips. South in the sense of below the belt, where all things worth knowing about happened. Door open, door shut, and Dean could swear that her mouth hadn't left his for the entire journey from bar to car.

Well, okay, then.

Still, this was…fast. Her hands yanked his shirt up enough to get at his belt and then his fly. She was wearing a thin sundress, spaghetti straps, and he pulled those down her shoulders as she swung a leg over his lap, straddling him, mouth still on his and he couldn't have offered a protest even if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't. He so didn't.

He had all night, he decided. This didn't need to be a quickie in the car. Or, not _just_ a quickie in the car. They could take the edge off here, go back to her place, fuck like monkeys till dawn. He ran a hand down her back, rucked up her skirt, adjusted himself minutely in the close space. Oh, man. He pulled her panties to the side, just enough, and then he was in. Mouth on her breast, one side, then the other and her hand was in his hair and she was making noises that sounded like a cat getting stepped on, which only made him feel like he was going to explode. _Wait_, he whispered and it came out just like he'd been stabbed in the chest. Goddamn if he didn't love the ridiculous noises women made while fucking. So basic and musical, something good and right in this stupid dark world.

It wasn't the best angle in the world, but Laurel had done this before, because she knew how to work it, work _him_, tightened around him like a fistful of dollars, and that was _it_, no way was he holding back. He shuddered into her, cheek slicked sweating in the hollow at the base of her neck and she let out a low moan, and he matched it. They sounded like a couple of drunks on karaoke night and Dean started laughing, finding release in all the obvious ways.

"Oh-oh-oh-oh," Laurel breathed into his hair as she steered his exploring mouth onto her breast. Like a hard candy in his mouth. "Oh, _Marty_."

-:-:-

Sam awoke with his cheekbone pressed against the open book, table lamp illuminating the pool of spit blurring ancient typeface. He couldn't quite figure out why he was so sore until he realized that it was morning, sunlight coming through an opening in the curtains, and he was lying face down on the bed, still in his clothes, pillows bunched under his shoulders to better prop himself up while reading. Which just meant that his shoulders were elevated above where his face rested and he looked like an inchworm stuck mid-inch.

Must have fallen asleep while trying to work out why sodium bicarbonate wasn't an easy replacement for natron. Maybe it was the pink food coloring. _Why the hell didn't Dean wake me? Shit, maybe he's died of laughter. _ Sam turned awkwardly on one elbow, rubbing sleep from his eyes, daubing drool with the cuff of his work shirt.

Dean wasn't in the room; his bed wasn't mussed. _Huh_. Sam sat up, went to the bathroom, relieved himself, then brushed his teeth. He came back out, checked his phone, but there were no messages, so he punched Dean's number on the keypad, speed dial. Used to have lots of numbers on speed dial; now, there was only the one. Quite the year so far.

One ring. Two. Then, _Wha? Tha'you, Sam?_

Great. Just great. Sam knew the drill, had worked it out years before. "Call me when you're up." _When you're decent._ Could be waiting a long time, if that was the standard. Short to the point of rudeness, then he snapped his phone shut with a grimace. A bit of time to do some nosing around before Dean's head cleared water and shook itself off. Sam was still getting used to it, Dean's moonlight drives, or maybe he'd forgotten about them, forgotten how Dean needed to get lost every once in awhile.

Just for a while, though. Twenty minutes, that's all it took.

The phone rang and Sam didn't even have time to say 'hey'.

_Sam! Sam, what the fuck, Sam. You at the motel?_

Sam tried to say 'yeah', but Dean was still talking, fast. _I'm there, I'm on my way —_

And Sam could hear, behind Dean's words, a weird edge of panic, and a pounding noise, like Dean was locked in a small room and someone was trying to get in. "Dean? Are you okay?" As was so often the case, Sam was stuck somewhere between concern and exasperation.

_Give me ten minutes, have the stuff ready to go —_

And the phone went dead.

It wasn't as though they had a lot to pack, but Sam packed it, waited for the unmistakable chugga-chugga of the Impala before pulling back the curtain to automatically check; the black car skidded to a stop, followed closely by a pick-up truck so jacked up you might need extra oxygen to ride in it. Dean burst from the barely-stopped car, and Sam flung open the door, arms held wide in question rather than welcome. Hard to get worried when Dean seemed whole and not-bleeding.

Dean gestured to the door — one finger, _Get the fuck inside, Sam_ — and Sam noticed the red welts down his Dean's neck, and that his shirt was undone and Sam understood where his brother had wandered. One of Dean's randy adventures gone wrong. The pick-up was going to be a husband or a boyfriend and this was the last thing they needed. Dean pushed past Sam, knocking one shoulder, and Sam heard, like an insect buzzing past his ear, "C'mon, we're outta here."

Hell, Sam was well past worried — he was mad.

Then the pick-up's door opened with an alarmed squeak, a large rodent being strangled, and to Sam's surprise it wasn't some burly boyfriend who jumped out, but the skinny garage owner from yesterday. Laurel, if Sam's memory served him, which it usually did.

"Marty!" she called, ignoring Sam as though he wasn't holding open the door, one long arm across the opening. She bounced on her tiptoes, trying to see in. "Marty, this isn't like you! I've called Uncle Antoine, he'll sort everything out!" She then looked at Sam. "It's the war, you know," she said conspiratorially. "It kinda makes them a little. You know." Fingers splayed, she rotated them near her ear like she was juicing a lemon against her head.

Although Sam knew how squirrelly war made people — hell, their father spoke in coordinates instead of words — he wasn't following her logic where it concerned Dean. "Um, Laurel?" he said to her. "Laurel, can you give us a minute?"

He didn't give her a chance to answer before closing the door behind him. "Dean?" he called to the empty room.

"Sam, time to get outta Dodge!" and Dean came out of the bathroom, doing the usual double-check, making sure that Sam had packed everything. It would have annoyed Sam, under other circumstances, Dean second-guessing Sam's ability to gather material goods, of all things.

Sam stood very still, arms folded. Dean stopped rooting around, dropped the duffle bag on the bed, eyes landing everywhere except Sam.

"Marty?" Sam asked, eyebrows up.

Dean took a breath, cocked his head to the side. "She seems to think that I'm her husband," he looked up quickly, hands up. "I didn't do anything —"

But something weird was going on, because even though Sam was sure it was his brother in front of him, the voice wasn't his. Some other guy's voice was coming from Dean's mouth, California vowels skipping like stones, a full half-octave above the usual timbre. And not quite in synch.

"Dean?" Sam asked, felt he had to. "_Kristo_," he followed up, automatically.

Dean stopped talking. Or, at least, he shut his mouth. The voice, the one that wasn't Dean's voice, still went on. "What the _fuck_, Sam?" And then Dean opened his mouth and said it, or his lips did, going on when the sound of him talking had stopped.

Lip synching himself.

Badly.

"Oh, fuck," Sam groaned, but couldn't help the burble of laughter that came with it.

"Sam!" Dean complained, but sound and movement didn't come together. "Goddamn Lucky!" and he turned away, maybe so Sam didn't laugh in his face.

There was a pounding on the door. "Marty!" Laurel's voice, concerned. "Marty, I know you've changed — but changed for the good! Goddamn, last night. I tell you, before you went away, you never coulda kept it up for that long. If this is my new Marty, I don't want the old one back. Come on, honey. I got one or two tricks left in me!"

"Dear God," Sam whispered, staring at Dean, who had the decency to look chagrined. "When did you figure it out? Please tell me it was, like, this morning."

Dean shook his head with a shrug meant to be disarming. "About five minutes after the first time she-" and Sam cut him off with a hand movement, mostly because it was too weird, some other guy's voice coming with his brother's words, and also because he really didn't want details of Dean's night with Laurel. A whole night. Non-stop, apparently.

The door was a thin one. Through it, they could hear another car pull up and Sam checked the window again and a pale blue late-model Ford turned into the spot beside the Impala, an older man getting out and then more pounding on the door.

"Listen," a man's voice came through the paneling. "I just talked with the real Marty. Phoned from an Army hospital, wondering why his wife wasn't picking up. Had to stall him, but he's on his way. I don't know who the fuck you think you are, son, but you've got some explaining to do." There was the soft sound of protests before this man — Uncle Antoine, apparently — called Laurel a two-timing whore. "He's a freakin' marksman, and I'm pretty sure he's armed. Do you know what the penalty is for fraud in this state?"

Privately thinking that the repercussions for fraud in the great state of California wouldn't measure up to an ex-soldier's revenge for banging his 'widow', Sam turned to Dean.

Who shrugged. His lips moved. Then, a half-beat later, "There's a back window in the bathroom. These guys are just stupid enough to not think of it."

"Where to, Dub Master?"

"You distract them away from the Impala, I'll meet you at the movie theater and we can frost Lucky's sorry ass on the Solomon Circle."

Doable, in Sam's opinion. He fished the pamphlet out from his backpack. "Children's matinee this afternoon — Asia Day. A bunch of Japanese anime." He laughed, thinking of it. Thinking of Dean's possible reaction to it. "_Spirited Away_. Alf's idea, for sure. Leni's not going to like it."

But Dean was full of surprises, and Sam was reminded that there had been four years apart.

"Anime, huh?" Dean said, two minutes later, by the back window as Sam pushed him through it. "Stupid big-eyed skinny guys who sweat too much. _Akira_ was good, though. Loads of blood. Cartoons, right? But for the peanut gallery." The words hung in the air even as Dean was brushing off the dirt from landing outside. "See you there."

-:-:-


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three/Bump in the Night

-:-:-

By the time the matinee was over, the sun was slanting eastward; shadows were dark puddles bleeding at their feet. The afternoon, especially after the tumult of the morning, had turned out great — not only was Dean's voice back to normal, but Alf had slipped him a big bag of peanut M&Ms in lieu of bunny-flavored popcorn. Leni, improbably, had given him her number. _I am on a roll._ Not that black-nailed chicks were usually his thing, but — well, if he was truthful, what woman wasn't his thing? Dean knew their father's stance on mixing business with pleasure, but Dad wasn't here, was he?

The candy was all the lunch he was going to get today. Sam had been pretty adamant about hiding from any potential fallout resulting from that fucking French movie, but M&Ms were the staff of life, or one of them, and Dean thought that if this was lunch, he could live with it. At least two of the food groups, far as he was concerned. Not only that, but he'd had a really decent sleep while that weirdo Japanese movie was playing — not many kids had shown up for the matinee and the theater was quiet as a church. No wonder the joint was losing money.

It hadn't had one decent bloody shoot-em-up, either. He hardly even knew what the movie had been about. Sam had already seen it of course, because it had won an Oscar or something, and he'd yammered away about classic anne-ee-may, and called some dude the 'Disney of Japan' like that was a compliment. Dean had only woken up once and that was when a gigantic baby had been trashing a really weird looking sushi restaurant. Or something like that.

"No cold spots, or anything," Dean said as they looked up and down the street.

Sam snorted. "Yeah? How would you know that, Marty?"

Dean's brows met and he scrunched up the empty candy bag and looked for someplace to toss it that wouldn't earn him a sharp remark from Captain Keep-America-Clean. With misgivings, he stuffed it in his pocket next to Leni's phone number.

"After last night, dude, I needed a sleep, okay?"

They started to walk slowly down the street, Sam darting glances, maybe looking for Laurel's black pick-up truck. "You end up screwing a soldier's wife, pretending to be her husband, and you don't sound sorry, Dean."

Dean shrugged. "Wonder if I get a free fill-up out of it?" The look Sam gave him made him stop in surprise. "What?"

Shaking his head (probably in wonderment at his big brother's legendary sexual prowess, Dean reckoned), Sam slowly circled around an overflowing garbage bin as Dean tossed the crumpled bag into it. The next show wasn't until seven; they had about two hours to kill, if Sam was serious about sitting through another one of these wacky Asian things. After Lucky's joke — and that's how Dean was thinking of it, a stupid artsy-fartsy ghost with a sense of fucking humor — Dean was pretty motivated to send Lucky back to the big projection booth in the sky. Do that, then return to the road.

"How come ghosts don't observe the rules?" Sam asked, seemingly to himself, because Dean sure as hell didn't want to answer that. "You shake and bake their stupid corpses and they don't stay dead. At least zombies have the decency to stay dead if you spike them." Earnest. Man, Dean would give the kid that. "But ghosts. I swear to God, they're just making up this whole spirit world thing as they go along. Tell me," and he turned to face Dean and shit, yeah, he was really expecting an answer, "how the hell is Lucky still around? And how the fuck did he pull that stunt, making poor Laurel think that you were her long-lost husband?'

"Well," Dean didn't want to disappoint Sam, even though that was the easiest thing in the world to do, like riding a bike, "Maybe he liked Laurel. Was doing her a favor."

Wrong answer.

Sam blinked in the lowering sun, dry light without a speck of moisture to soften it. "You're someone's favor? You?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Why not? Coulda done without the outta sync business. But what I can't figure out is why he picked that movie. I thought he liked it."

Sam made a little noise that Dean remembered so well from all the years in the backseat, the Snort of You're So Stupid. "The double-header. We drew him in and then we stuck him with the bad version. We sucker punched him. We stirred the pot, hit the wasp's nest with a stick."

"Whoa, Metaphor-Man!"

Sam ran a hand through his hair, which flopped back into his eyes obligingly. "He fought fire with fire. And you pissed him off. You're no one's favor."

He didn't have to enjoy it quite so much.

They had walked in a big circle and were now back at the Melodrama. Dean opened his hands, forefingers flicking out — what next?

Sam didn't have time to suggest a what next, because at that moment a paper airplane soared past his ear and hit Dean squarely on the forehead.

"Ow!" Dean yelped, looking around for the offender and coming up empty. He bent down, picked up the airplane. He slowly unfolded it. It was a flyer for the weekend's schedule. Another airplane appeared out of the thin blue air and hit him on the back of the head this time. Dean crumpled the paper into a ball, stared at Sam.

"Shit," was all Sam said.

-:-:-

For Sam, it was all pretty damn funny at first. The paper airplanes chased his brother down the street, smacking against his running back with enough force to leave bruises, or at least that's what Dean claimed when they ducked out of range into a forlorn greasy spoon, Dean's hair askew, small red marks dotting his neck and face. There was a trail of flyers fluttering on the sidewalk outside like dead crane flies after mating season. Trouble was, although Sam was fairly certain this was more of Lucky's handiwork, he wasn't too sure how to stop it, or what was going to happen next. The paper airplane bombardment apparently came to an end when Dean entered the diner. _Weren't flying letters from the first Harry Potter movie? _ And Sam opened his mouth to suggest it, but then thought about what his brother would say at mention of "that fucking weenie of a wizard" and thought better of it.

"I don't remember paper airplanes in that stupid French movie," was the foray Dean opened with, sliding into the bench seat and casting about for some coffee and a menu. "They didn't have paper airplanes in medieval France," he clarified, in case Sam somehow missed his irritation.

Fat chance. In Sam's vast experience, Dean never hid his irritation, shoved it forward like a stage mom with a talented tot.

Sam shook his head, glanced over at the next table. A super-sized man and woman sat there, paying them no attention, several large plates of food piled on top of the other — a gaggle of hamburgers, glistening fries and breaded fish filets, several stacks of pancakes so precarious they reminded Sam of something Chinese acrobats would spin on poles. The couple bent over their meal, oblivious to Dean's rising voice.

Dean was right; there were no paper airplanes in _La Retour de Martin Guerre_. The thought ticked over in Sam's brain, niggling.

"Hey!" Dean shouted. "Can we get some service here?" The wait staff must be in the back, on break. Outside, dark was beginning to fall, but softly as it did in the high plateaus. Sam could see the glow of neon in the street beyond the plate glass window, the array of fallen flyers littering the sidewalk outside. "Do I have to get my goddamn coffee myself?" Dean muttered under his breath.

Sam tapped his fingers against the table, ignoring the attitude. "The airplanes went for you. You were the one lip-synching worse than a boy band, and Laurel, well, she didn't mistake _me_ for anyone."

Dean grinned, waggled his brows, a night of hot sex apparently outweighing the very real ramifications of getting in the cross hairs of a ghost.

"Lucky's after you, Dean. He's taking it personally."

Dean's attention was on the non-existent waitress. "Personally? You don't get to take shit personally when you're dead."

_Oh, yeah, there's a good argument, Dean_. "Listen, the salt and burn didn't work. The hex bags didn't work. Maybe we need to talk to him."

Dean pulled a face. "You don't talk to ghosts. The stupid morbid motherfuckers usually don't even know they're dead. There's no reasoning with them."

"So? Your suggestion would be?"

Dean's attention wasn't on Sam. "Shit, those people got fed, where the hell is…" and Dean got to his feet, apparently about to march into the kitchen.

Sam turned back to the table across the room, where the couple were now completely hunched over the table, flushed faces almost making contact with the table, low grunts audible above the clank of dishes as they slid against each other. "Goddamn," Sam breathed, astonished and fearful. Paper birds, not airplanes, which meant…

Dean, oblivious to the couple other than to the fact that they had food and he did not, was almost to the swinging doors separating the dining room from the kitchen. Sam took a breath, preparing to shout his brother's name.

That's when he heard the first oink.

He turned, he'd only taken his eyes off the couple for a second, but in that time, they had transformed into two enormous pigs and they slid out of the booth into the aisle and Dean was immobile by the door, his eyes round.

Dean wouldn't know. He'd slept through most of _Spirited Away_. The pigs would be somewhat nonsensical, Sam supposed, jumping out of the way as the sow and the boar careened past him, bumping into banquettes and knocking tables from their moorings. China crashed to the floor. "Dean!" Sam shouted, but it was too late, the lights had come on outside, and they were stuck inside a Lucky's idea of a Japanese ghost story. Sam watched as Dean pivoted in his stance, watched the pigs run for the door, smashing through the glass, glittering like…like…and though it had just been a movie, this was a dangerous place, they were where they weren't supposed to be after dark.

_Too bad Lucky doesn't understand that Winchesters are always where they're not supposed to be after dark._ A god-awful pride surged in him and he watched as Dean's lips tightened, pissed off, not angry and Sam understood that they really were a breed apart.

"Get to the car!" Dean shouted, just as a wall of water sloshed from under the door to the kitchen and Sam was pretty sure a river spirit big as a house was going to be coming out next, a pissed off apparition dredged from the slimy bottom of a dead body of water, but Dean hadn't seen the movie, and so he wouldn't know. _I'll wake him up next time_, Sam thought.

Wake him up — next time — and there was only one place where they would be…not precisely _safe_, but where things changed, where one movie stopped and the next one started.

Sam rushed toward his brother, the door groaning at its hinges as something huge lunged behind it. The whole diner smelled of river rot and compost. He got two hands on Dean, one on either shoulder, pulling him away from the door. "Not the car," Sam said into his ear. "The Melodrama. Otherwise we're going to be fighting something way bigger than pigs."

Not that Sam minded fighting a river monster, it's just that it was without point. Lucky was controlling this, evidently, this jaunt in indy film wonderland, and getting fucked up by a Japanese bathhouse spirit wouldn't do either of them a bit of good.

Sam dragged a reluctant Dean past the pig-fashioned opening in the plate glass window, let him go so he could open the door, hoped the paper airplanes wouldn't come after them — Dean — again. The streets outside were deserted, the lamps lit and the whole of Buttonwillow was like a…an abandoned movie set. Sam's footsteps echoed weirdly, more so because they were…solo. Damn. He turned around, but the street was empty. No Dean.

Retracing his steps, he saw Dean, still inside the diner, standing in front of what had to be a giant slug, slurping its way across the floor, expanding and contracting, gray as vomit, speckled with junk — a broken shopping cart, a mangled bike. As Sam watched, the slug's body shook like Jell-o and an arm-like protuberance extended toward a transfixed Dean, showering the wet floor between them with gold coins.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, but his brother didn't turn and Sam wracked his brain for plot points. _You forget your name, you forget who you are, and you never return. _ So he threw an arm around Dean's shoulders from behind, drew Dean to his chest, dragged him back a few steps. No way to kill this thing. It wasn't precisely evil, either. Just…polluted. Dean was rigid in Sam's arms, and Sam whispered, "Dean. Winchester. Like you'd forget _that_, asshole."

One second, then Dean stirred, and threw off Sam's arm in one movement. He whirled, no confusion in his eyes. "What the fuck, Sam. Outta here — " and he didn't have to say where they were going, because Sam knew that Dean was pissed now, and no matter how wacky this stupid ghost was, Sam didn't envy its spectral ass, not one bit.

-:-:-

Of course, the river slug followed them all the way to the Melodrama, lurching from side to side of the empty streets, knocking over lampposts and fire hydrants, scattering gold coins everywhere, beseeching them to come back with voices borrowed from whatever people it had ingested, Dean reckoned. He ignored it, whispering to himself over and over: _Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester, Dean — I can't believe you fell for that — Winchester. _ Dad would have his ass if he knew, but one good thing about Sam: he wasn't a snitch. Sam would rather stick it to Dad than stick it to Dean and for that, Dean was grateful.

If Dad found out that Dean had forgotten his name when faced by a river spirit — not just a plain old river spirit, but one conjured up by a fucking theater ghost, well. Dean wasn't going to hear the end of it anytime soon.

Dean wasn't too worried about any damage to property the giant slug was inflicting on the borough of Buttonwillow — he suspected that the town, like Laurel, would soon forget about any of these ghostly illusions. It galled him, but Sam was right: Lucky, for better of for worse, was after _him_ now. Buddy fucking Bourne should pay them a whopping bonus for this job.

Leni looked up expectantly as Dean and Sam rushed in, Dean's clothes stinking like something had died in them, and wasn't that just a version of his usual graveyard cologne? Everyone looked to the door like Jesus was going to enter, but nothing happened. "Told you," Sam said quietly.

"Did not."

Sam's lips twitched and he gave a little shrug. "Guessed it?"

"Totally," Dean agreed. "All movies stop at the Melodrama." He turned with a smile. The lobby was empty. Alf stood at the velvet rope by the theater's double doors, mute surprise on his long face. "Okay, kids. Seen Lucky tonight yet?"

Alf shook his head. "The second show's just started, _Paprika_. It's trippy, by Satoshi Kon and Madhouse Films. You can watch for awhile," and he jerked a thumb towards the red vinyl-covered door, "see what you think."

Leni leaned against the counter. "Not as though there's a goddamn soul in there with that fucking music."

Alf actually looked crestfallen. "They just don't understand J-Pop in this town."

J-Pop notwithstanding, Dean suspected that they weren't going to nab Lucky hanging out in the seats anytime soon, not unless J-Pop was actually a euphemism for Jennifer Lopez and some actor Dean didn't care to find out about. No way was he going to tell Sam any of that, because Sam was nodding his head and had probably taken a fucking third-year course in whatever J-Pop was.

Into the darkened theater, synthesized music filling the darkened reaches, and at first Dean didn't pay too much attention to what was happening on screen because he was looking for a ghost in the seats. Pretty soon, though, he looked up and was reminded that although it had been a full ten years since he'd dropped his last hit of acid, some things were just meant to be seen stoned. This was one of them.

Trippy was an understatement. All kinds of weird shit, including a chick tied down with a big-ass tentacle whipping round her, no shit, _into her_, like, like…and Dean didn't know precisely what squirmed in him then, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant, whatever it was, even though a part of his brain told him that it was gross. He tilted his head, trying to make sense of it.

By that time, he'd left Sam to scour the theater, hunt under seats, and check the chalk-inscribed Solomon Circle used to hold ghosts to one place while you dispersed them with Latin. Sam had been a little fussy about reinstalling the hex bags, ones that he'd made with proper natron instead of heartburn medication.

A familiar tight burn crept up from Dean's groin like a hot flush, and he tried looking away from the screen, but it was like a train wreck. Damn. He'd always thought of himself as a bit of an adventurer when it came to sex, but this? This was tapping into something a little less…_known_. Hell, no danger of falling asleep with this one. He shifted in his seat, trying to get more settled.

Finally, just at the point that the superchick character had entered the last dreamy sequence and robots were rampaging through a destroyed city, Sam dropped into the seat beside Dean.

"Shhh," Dean cautioned, glancing at Sam and seeing the surprise there. 'Surprise' wasn't good; surprise meant questions. "I'm watching the movie." Which was even worse. It was handing Sam a cartridge full of bullets. Sam's eyebrows shot up and he slouched down into the lame padding with a big grin pulling dimples to either side. Dean ignored his brother's glee.

"Pretty good, eh?" Sam said.

"You seen this shit before?"

And of course Sam had, Dean hardly had to ask. By the time the lights came up and the impossibly catchy pop song escorted the credits, Dean knew that Sam would be yammering on about Dean's newfound fascination with foreign language cartoons for days, if not weeks. _Years_.

There were three people in the theater and as they stood up, the nearest man to them, middle-aged, paunchy, stretched and looked behind them with a grin. "Almost as good as his earlier work, don't you think?"

Dean was so not getting into this conversation, dissecting the merits of something that was better left to pharmaceuticals and Dan Savage. Enough that he'd been…_stirred_ by the damn thing. Especially that one scene. Damn. He kept seated, wasn't going to stand for a minute or two.

But Sam was nodding, "Better, some say," and then changed pace. "This theater seem cold to you?"

"Are you talking about Lucky?" The guy looked a damn film prof from some eastern liberal-arts college.

Sam squared a look to Dean, then nodded. "Yeah, I guess I am. How…"

The older man grinned behind his graying beard, glasses sliding down his nose before he pushed them up with a butter-slick hand. "Oh, Lucky. Everyone who liked film around here knew Lucky and Ana. Too bad what happened to them." He shook his head, looked genuinely saddened. "Sure gave us film buffs a lift, having Lucky here."

First of all, the guy called movies 'work' and now he'd used the word 'buff' and that was about all Dean was going to take. "So, why's Lucky so pissed? Why's he not resting peacefully in the sweet hereafter?"

The other man squinted at Dean, then grinned in recognition, like Dean had just told a good one. "Ha! Atom Egoyan. Great stuff!"

Dean slowly came to his feet.

Sam started to get animated. "Ah, no. Not _The Sweet Hereafter_." He gestured helplessly. "But, you know. The actual sweet hereafter."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Dean wasn't a film buff interested in the work. "Ah, well. Yes. Lucky wasn't a happy man, obviously. Killed himself. Right up there," and pointed to the balcony. He looked back down, jostled the cloth across his shoulders with a half-hearted shrug, like suicide was beyond anyone's understanding, which maybe it was. "Ana broke his heart, went off with another man. Lucky wasn't exactly…" and searched for a word to describe him.

"Stable," Dean supplied, annoyed. "We heard." He turned to Sam, hoping that the giant river slugs and paper planes had subsided outside the relative sanctuary of the Melodrama. "C'mon, let's go."

"You aren't staying for the second feature?" the man called after them.

Dean turned. "There's a late show?" Despite being bombarded by movie-flyer projectiles, Dean hadn't retained that there was a late feature, let alone what it was.

The man nodded, eyes gleaming. "_The Host_."

Sam shifted beside him. "_The Host_?" Shoulder down, shielding his words from Lucky's film buff friend. "Man, Dean, if Lucky's going to play hard and fast with movie monsters, we could be in trouble with this one."

Dean's knowledge of horror was pretty damn vast, but he was coming up short. "Is it, like, with that vampire slayer chick?"

Sam shook his head. "Nah. This is Korean, pollutants create this big river monster in the sewage system that eats people."

Dean grinned. "Didn't we just do that? In the diner? I think we're safe tonight, Sam. Lucky's already taken his swipe at us. Go sit with Professor Spielberg there and see what he's got to say about Lucky. Maybe he'll remember something that we can use."

"Dean," Sam whispered. He looked appalled. "You don't _talk_ during a movie."

Years apart didn't mean he couldn't still stare Sam down, or up as the case might be, given how damn tall the kid was. When Sam looked away, dimples cratering his face in annoyance now, not humor, Dean tried conciliation. "Alf's still got more to spill. I'll go talk to him, you work over the prof." Divide and conquer, simplest strategy in the book and one that Dean knew their father had employed with military precision.

He briefly watched Sam's darkened silhouette amble toward the film prof and then Dean turned, knowing that he was more interested in talking to Leni than Alf and that Alf would be the one with more information. _Mixing business with pleasure, don't do it. _ Dad might as well be sitting on his shoulder like a cartoon angel, though Dean couldn't quite see his dad with wings. Pitchfork, maybe. Wings _and_ a pitchfork. _But cartoons, Dad, you shoulda seen this one._

Alf was scanning the lobby anxiously, but that might just have been his normal routine, an amped up geek keen on getting more people turned on to Asian movies. Dean didn't really want to think about getting turned on to Asian movies, or maybe he did, but he was working, wasn't he? So he leaned against the tall stand holding movie flyers, eyed them suspiciously before deciding that they weren't going to hurt him, and opened with what he thought was a fairly safe topic.

"So, what was the flick?"

Alf stared at him, took tickets from a bunch of teenagers obviously stoned, waved them through. "The movie? Tonight?"

Dean waved his hand around dismissively. "I know tonight's. Japanese toilet monster."

"Korean," Alf corrected him, but paled under the glare.

Dean let it sit for a minute, watched as Alf uneasily took more tickets. Midnight monster movies in Buttonwillow seemed to be the best thing going. In Dean's experience, people liked monsters when they were twenty feet tall and 2-dimensional. "I meant, what was the movie Lucky was watching when he died?"

"Well, his favorite one," like Dean was an idiot.

"Okay, I'm only making small talk," and he caught Leni's eye from across the lobby and she cracked a smile and that was enough for Dean. He didn't even bother nodding to Alf, he pushed off from the wall with one hand, the other in his pocket, hand around her phone number, which he wouldn't need, not when she was right there. Two kids cut in front of him, anxious for popcorn, blocking his way and Dean heard Alf's quavering voice behind him.

"_Lust for Life_," the ticket taker called out, almost embarrassed, Dean thought.

He turned to Alf with a grin. "That's me. Iggy Pop incarnate," and kept walking, past the counter, winked at Leni, time enough after the movie, Dean reckoned. He wanted to check the balcony now, see if Lucky was up there, make sure that the reconstituted hex bags Sam had replaced were doing their thing.

Doing their thing a little too well, were maybe keeping Lucky completely out rather than allowing him to get trapped. Glancing down from the balcony into the audience as a surprisingly realistic monster charged up out of a river and chomped down on some fleeing tourists, Dean saw that Sam was sitting silently next to the film prof, probably having been shushed. Sam responded to shushing, Dean knew. _Lightweight_. Well, Dean would just have to see about the hex bags himself. He went to the cardinal points of the theater, where Sam had smacked careful holes in the plaster and jammed his bags in. Dean gathered all four, returned to the lobby and dropped them behind the popcorn counter. He flirted with Leni for a little bit, and wangled an invitation for a drink after she got off. Alf stood miserably across the lobby.

Dean was able to catch the last few minutes of the movie, liked the flaming arrow bit — shit, he should use the one of those things more often, it looked damn cool, way cooler than a crossbow — and felt improbably saddened as the credits rolled. Without fail, he always sided with the misunderstood monster. Catching Sam's stand and sudden questing eye, he waved him over.

"So, what did Roger Ebert say?" The film prof brushed by them, glaring at Sam as he exited the theater.

"Well," Sam said, and Dean could tell he was pissed, like those times when they'd cut town and Sam still had library books in the back of the Impala, "he doesn't like to be interrupted when he's watching a movie. Thinks it's rude."

They walked back out into the lobby and Dean made a bee-line for the counter. "Hey Leni, I'll be a minute or two. Want to give Sam back his medicine bundles?" and he flicked a finger to where the hex bags sat next to the butter-flavored topping dispenser.

"Dean," Sam said as Leni passed them to him, "You shouldn't move these. They're protection. This theater's the only safe place we've got."

"Well, yeah," Dean said, walking toward the sign that said 'Gents' beneath a black and white headshot of Humphrey Bogart. Lauren Bacall graced the opposite door. He pushed open the door; the bathroom was empty and their voices echoed a little against the tile. "We kinda need to _see_ Lucky so that we can _get_ Lucky."

Sam didn't laugh along with Dean's joke. Dean sighed, went into a stall, kept up a running monologue, which he knew Sam hated. Sam liked privacy in the bathroom and naturally assumed, Dean knew, that everyone else did too.

"I think that we missed something in the grave, maybe," Dean continued, dropping drawers and sitting down. This might take a while. He could make it take a while, because having a conversation in the bathroom was actually a place where things got said. Like in the car, it was easier sometimes when you didn't look at each other. You could say what was on your mind, like how he imagined things were in a confessional booth. Dean wiped the smile off his face, even though he knew Sam wouldn't be able to see it.

"You think?" came Sam's terse reply. "Obviously, we're missing something. He's being held back here for a reason. We find the reason, he'll disappear."

"Well, we know why he died and how he died." Working backward to move forward; that was the nature of this damn business. No answer from over the wall, though. "Sam?"

"Are you going out with Leni tonight? Because I think it's going to piss Alf off, and we really need their cooperation."

"You telling me not to mix business with pleasure?"

A short laugh, surprise maybe. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time your dick messed things up for us."

"Hey!" was the only comeback, mostly because Sam had a damn point and Dean already had their father as a needler of conscience.

Silence, then: "I mean, I don't care, it's none of my business." But he sounded sad or wistful or something, maybe thinking of Jessica, Dean reckoned. Shit.

"Where do you think the girlfriend is? The ex?" Easier to push Sam sideways than to shove him back.

"What girlfriend?" Sam asked.

"Ana?"

But that last word came out on a rising inflection, because something had just curled round his thigh, something both soft and hard, unyielding and flexible and needy as a giraffe's tongue stripping a thorny acacia tree of its leaves.

He was too surprised to say anything, at first.

Startled, Dean looked down, but by then another — what the fuck? — another _tentacle_ had emerged from the toilet beneath him, insinuated itself around his other thigh. He made to get his knife, slipped down the side of his desert boot, and another coil wrapped itself around his wrist, slowly pulled his arm up and away even as a fourth tendril quested silently out the bowl, curling around his waist, another emerged dripping, but wasn't going above the belt, wherever his belt was in this sudden tangle of flesh and silky moist rope and — _whoa_!

He opened his mouth, took air into his breathless lungs, ready to call out.

Then one tentacle whipped up around his neck, into his mouth, so fast and calm and sure Dean didn't know if he should be appalled or flattered. Or something else altogether. _ I should do something._ But frankly, he wasn't in the most defensible of positions, not in any definition of the word.

_Maybe I shouldn't have moved the hex bags_, he thought, somewhat belatedly.

-:-:-


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four/Things that Go Boom

-:-:-

The way his brother said 'Ana' made Sam think of ice cream. The vowels slipped — started hard, then rose before softening into a sigh. Man, he really couldn't be doing these bathroom confessionals because Dean always turned them into something…dirty. But fate found Sam in this, his twenty-third year, listening to his brother do God-alone knew what in a haunted movie theater's bathroom stall and for a minute, Sam felt like he was fourteen again. Dean had a way of doing that to you. Somehow, Dean's march to maturity had halted in his late teens; everything else had kept moving and he just stayed the same.

What movie was that from again?

But the line was gone, and now there was a vague sloshing from the stall, and Sam clenched his teeth. Dean and his graphic bowel movements. Any moment he was going to stink up the joint and then laugh and laugh. So predictable. Women were so much easier to live with. Jessica had put potpourri in their bathroom, for pete's sake, little bowls of dried flowers and cinnamon sticks.

"Yeah, Ana, that was it," as though conversation was going to distract Dean from his assigned rounds. Still, worth a try, at least to take his own mind off the sound of Dean straining himself. "I wonder what happened to her? Maybe she still lives in the area. Maybe she has something of Lucky's that he wants back." It could be; entirely likely that Lucky had given her some keepsake. A ring or something. Lesser things had tied ghosts to this world, Sam knew. Dried rose petals and orange rinds; their bathroom had smelled like an Arabian bath.

More sloshing, and all Sam could smell was the urinal disinfectant puck, which was only marginally better than any alternative he cared to name. A sudden bang on the side of the stall, a rattle of the lock, and a squeaking noise that sounded like nothing so much as a finger rubbing a clean dish still steamy from the dishwasher.

In the annals of Dean's toilet habits, this took the cake.

"God, Dean, for fuck's sake, do you have to-" but the stall rattled again, and Sam had had enough. "I'll leave you to it, then," he said, hand reaching for the Bogart door.

Just then a moan, strangled, and a gasp, like pain, but not quite, and the distinctive slap of body weight thrown against tile. Instinctively, though he really didn't want to know, Sam dropped to one knee to see what the hell Dean was doing on the bathroom floor.

Sam's sightline was confined to under the stall's dividing wall, the strip of scenery between floor and the rim of toilet. Not that he'd thought to conjure such an image, but he'd been expecting to see his brother's bunched jeans, his boot tips, maybe a hand splayed against the tile because he'd lost his balance or some such nonsense. But it wasn't Dean, or not _just_ Dean, and Sam blinked, struggling to make sense of it.

Coils of grayish-pink flesh moved in sinuous waves, tightening around what might have been Dean's calf, a pile of clothing heaped in the corner, a series of pink toes suddenly jerked out of sight as whatever was in there with Dean lifted him off the ground and out of Sam's line of vision.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, shoulder finding door, ramming it. The monster must be pushing against it, though, because bathroom stall doors didn't usually present much fight against good shove, but this one did. "Dean!" Sam shouted again.

"Sam," Dean's voice was strained. "Uh, Sam," but he didn't sound panicked. "Can you —" and the voice trailed away on a caught breath. "Do you think you could give me a coupla minutes?"

What? "Dean, no," he said as forcefully as he could. "Fight it off!"

"Umn," Dean replied, a low growl. "Maybe…right about…the hex…_oh_," and Sam actually winced.

The hex bags were sitting on the counter and they were all that was keeping the monsters out. Maybe if he just put them -

"Dean?" Sam was less sure, because Dean didn't sound like he was trying to get loose, not hard anyway.

"Just…dammit, Sam!" and Sam had heard that voice before, usually when he'd walked in on Dean and some girl which, given their cramped upbringing, had happened more often than Sam cared to recall.

It took Sam fewer than five minutes to return the hex bags to the holes he'd made for them at the compass points, but whether those minutes were heaven or hell for Dean Winchester, Sam never knew, because when he got back to the Bogart room, Dean was leaning against the wall, buttoning up his jeans, shirt in a ball on the tiles, a series of pink stripes criss-crossing his chest and back like octopus hickey marks. Sam glanced into the empty stall; there was water all over the floor, but nothing else. At least, he hoped it was water.

He stared balefully at Dean. "All clear?" he asked.

"As a whistle," Dean replied, picking up his shirt. "Think I'm gonna give Leni a raincheck tonight."

And Sam could swear Dean was walking funny, but it really didn't bear thinking about.

-:-:-

He slept well, not surprising given the exertions of the day, was up before Sam and checking the windows and doors, though he kept the chair braced against the motel's bathroom door, because one run-in with a toilet monster was enough. Fun, slightly beyond his usual, okay, but enough. Dean ran a hand across the top of his head, considered his dad's maxim about business and pleasure. Hard to avoid, sometimes. Lucky sure as hell had a weird sense of humor.

Sam was out like a light, and Dean finally braved the bathroom, did his business quickly and kept an eye on the bowl. It was already warming up outside and all Dean really wanted was to jump in the car and drive. Didn't care if he had coordinates or a job, or anything, because the road was open and the yellow highway lines pulled at him like they had a hook in his gills. Stupid fucking Lucky was keeping him put in Buttonwillow and Dean had one more reason to hate the spook.

Time to toast Lucky's ass and get out of town.

What had they been talking about last night? Right, the ex-girlfriend. Definitely worth a shot. Dean rummaged through yesterday's jeans — they smelled truly funky and Dean knew that he ought to put them in their own plastic bag, might have to dump them in the trash rather than wash them — and found Leni's number. Sam woke up as Dean got Ana's last name, and the not-so-startling information that she had only moved down the road a bit, had married an oil man in Taft. Leni didn't have any more information than that, but Dean knew Sam could wring details out of the laptop before he'd had a morning coffee.

Over breakfast, Dean realized that Sam was avoiding looking at him, would have been avoiding him altogether, except for the fact that they were more or less joined at the hip, a side-effect of how Winchesters worked. "What?" he said finally, shoving the last piece of toast in his mouth, leaving Sam with no distractions.

Sam's attention was implausibly on the sticky syrup jug, one finger tracing up the side. He sighed, smiled, shook his head, did it all at once to produce something akin to 'screw you-none of my business'.

Never one to let a full mouth come in the way of conversation, Dean said, "Listen, you don't have to like my methods to-"

"Methods?" Sam's hands stilled on the tabletop. "What 'method' were you employing last night?"

Dean thought about it. "Intimidation?" Sam didn't say anything, but his head tilted to the side in disbelief. "At least we know the hex bags work." Offered that as a consolation. Dean motioned for the check, looked back in time to see a strange expression on Sam's face. "Okay," he dropped his voice, had never known how to placate Sam, how to make all the weirdness better. _You just have to go with it sometimes, Sammy. You don't fight it. There's no point. _ "No matinee today, right?"

Sam sighed, not winning whatever war was going on. "Nope. Alf said that Buddy was encouraged by our efforts," and his hard stare landed on Dean again. "We've drawn Lucky's attention away from Buddy, which is good enough for him."

"Aw, are you worried about me, Sam?" A little like throwing lighter fluid on a hot engine; it was the usual dance and Dean remembered all the steps.

"Yeah, I'm worried about you. Budgies, bad dubbing, river spirits, pigs — tentacles? I mean, that's sick, even for you."

Dean opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Sam wasn't finished. "It's like you have no grip on reality."

"Sam," Dean was surprised, more than anything. "Look around. We're trying to figure out a movie theater ghost. This _is_ our reality."

"Okay," Sam said slowly, after a long minute of staring down the napkin dispenser. "Buddy's going to go back to pirates after this weekend, Alf said. One more night of foreign programming and then Lucky's going to go apeshit again. We don't have time to _enjoy_ ourselves."

So that was it? "You're not getting enough action. You wanted a piece of the toilet monster?"

Sam got up and left Dean with the bill.

-:-:-

Part of the trouble, Sam decided on the half-hour drive to Taft, was that Dean wasn't taking this seriously. Somehow, Dean thought he was bulletproof, and that other people, especially ones that got pecked to death by pet store birds, were just too stupid to save. And somewhere in the middle of that was messy territory that included abstract notions of family and duty and protect and serve. Dean was an emotionally-needy killing machine cut free from the iron control of their father and Sam suspected that while he was trying to figure it out, Dean was trying just as hard to ignore it.

Ignore it in whatever way presented itself — aimless sex, backseat sex, toilet sex. Sex was probably better than alcohol, their father's weapon of choice. The oil derricks sped past the window, a blur of never-ceasing toil, large ungainly birds pulling worms from the ground. But that was too close to tentacles. Sam was willing to bet that Dean didn't know squat about nineteenth century Japanese erotic _shunga_ woodcuts, but damn it if those stupid Stanford art history classes combined with one or two forays into anime festivals hadn't made a lasting impression on Sam. He slouched further down into the seat, wondering if he was, however improbably, jealous.

That wasn't really the worst of it.

"You know what's playing tonight?" he asked into the road silence, Dean's one hand steering at 1 o'clock, other elbow resting on the open window, rhythm of the rolling wheels and touch of moving air like a third person in the car.

Dean turned, looked at him. Sam had to raise his voice over the wind.

"Tonight? Movie?"

Dean rolled up the window most of the way, turned down the scratching tuneless warbles of the erratic radio. "Some Spanish shit, I think. Don't worry. We'll get this cleared up by then."

They pulled up to what Sam would call a suburban mansion. Dean double-checked the address, then shrugged. "Ana married up, didn't she? If she'd stuck with Lucky, she'd probably be living in his mother's basement. In Bolivia."

Ana Cortés hadn't picked up the phone when Sam had called, there'd just been her voice in both English and Spanish instructing them to record their name and number, and Sam hadn't left a message in either language. Now, he wondered if he should have, constructed some story about their visit.

"No point," Dean said as they got out the car, Sam musing aloud. "She'll either tell us or she won't. She knows what a nutbar Lucky was. She'll probably want to help."

The door opened with a waft of air conditioned cool that tightened the skin on Sam's face, made him want to push past her into the room, just to enjoy the sensation. That was the first thing he noticed, then Ana Cortés, in a white tank top, dark hair looped on top of her head, brown eyes seriously considering them both, veiled behind a thicket of lashes. At least ten years their senior, trotting spectacularly toward her forties, everything intact.

"Yes?" she asked, glance darting, but not suspicious. _She should be suspicious,_ Sam thought.

"Dean Winchester. My brother, Sam," Dean said, and Sam didn't have to look to recognize the pleased surprise Dean was experiencing, because he felt it himself.

"Yes?" she asked again, her brows creeping up a little, ruffling the skin of her forehead. She wore a lot of silver, which comforted Sam. He trusted women who wore silver, had been taught to, mostly by bitter experience. Didn't make them _nice_, precisely, but it did cut back on the occurrence of demon lovers.

"We need to talk to you about Lucio Jorge." Trust Dean to be blunt. _At least he sounds apologetic._

"Lucky?" Ana said, and opened the door wider, like this was a good thing, strangers arriving at her door wanting to grill her about her suicidal ex-boyfriend. "Sure."

They came in, and Sam hoped that Dean was at least as wary as he was, but he doubted it. Dean bounced a little on his feet, accepted the invitation for a drink on the back deck, and they settled out under a sun umbrella next to a sparkling blue swimming pool, a couple of mojitos in their hands and it wasn't even noon.

"So, you've been married for -" Sam said, and the mint and rum and lime might as well have been water because damn, this was a fine sight better than warm Coke and popcorn, which had been the steady diet for the past few days, that and M&Ms.

"Married for seven years, divorced for one." Ana supplied. Her profile was almost Greek, Sam thought, severe when in thought, lit up when in conversation. She stopped looking at the pool, swiveled her glance to them. "My ex-husband bought into the American dream hook, line and sinker. All he cared about was money and women."

"Not movies?" Dean asked, continuing the campaign of tact.

Ana smiled slowly, stared at Dean in such a way that Sam had to take another sip of his drink. It went down fast. "Not movies. Lucky was…"

"Unstable?" Sam interjected, hoping that she'd look at him the same way.

Not a chance. "Fun. Lucky was a lot of fun." She noticed his drink. "Another?" And Dean said, 'sure,' and that was that.

While she was in the kitchen, a curtain blowing out from the open sliding doors, Sam turned to his brother, his voice a low whisper. "Dean!"

"What? You're not thirsty?"

"Business." With one hand. "Pleasure." With the other. Held apart by about a foot, two words that ought to straighten him out. But given the last couple of days, it was a faint hope.

Dean shrugged. "Business, pleasure. Same-same."

Time for the big guns. "It's not just some Spanish shit playing tonight, you idiot. It's _Y Tu Mama Tambien._"

Dean wouldn't have heard of this one, Sam was pretty sure, even though he might even like it, up to a certain point.

Dean's brows worked: _Don't know, don't care, fine tell me._

"Mexican film. About two young guys on a road trip with an older woman."

"They have hot sex?" was the immediate question, the immediate _interest_, but Sam had anticipated this, so he didn't roll his eyes.

"Oh yeah," Sam said, but he hoped Dean picked up the note of warning.

Regardless, a lewd grin — the only kind Dean seemed capable of this weekend — crossed his face. "Sounds like my kind of movie." He sneaked a look at Sam. "Was it a threesome? That's what's got you worried? 'Cause, you know, if it came to that -"

Sam really wasn't ready to talk to Dean about threesomes.

"It didn't end well for the two guys," was all Sam was going to say about it. "Didn't end well for their friendship. They never spoke again, after." Dean could damn well see the movie if he wanted to know the ending. "We want to end this before it gets to that, believe me." Too much tequila and a beach hut, and the three together, and then just the two boys together, waking up and not being able to look at each other.

Then Ana was back, all gleaming smile, tray laden with a glass jug and mint leaves and it was hot, dammit. Dean looked disappointedly at Sam, details of threesomes having to wait. The heat was suffocating.

"So, Lucky. He's not really gone, you know." Dean took the glass from her hand, and she sat down close to him on the same lounger and Sam was left to pour his own mojito. "He's been haunting the Melodrama."

Ana stopped mid-movement. "Really?" she sounded surprised, not what Sam was hoping for.

"You've never…seen him?" Sam asked, and she turned to him, the white she was wearing almost blinding. It sounded like such a stupid question, when put like that.

"You mean…?" Her nails where manicured, and every finger was mounted with silver and turquoise, luck and protection and power.

"He's never appeared to you, since he died." Somehow, Dean made it sound more plausible, damn him.

Ana shook her head. "Nope. He got really, really intense at the end. I should have stuck with him, though. I wouldn't have had all this," and she gestured to the pool deck, the palm trees, neighbors nowhere to be seen through an orange grove, "but Lucky was faithful. I'll give him that."

Somehow, the suggestion of a swim was made. Maybe it was the three — no, four, hard to keep count — mojitos that influenced Sam, or maybe it was Dean's lazy smile suggesting anything was possible, didn't they make their own rules, but Sam was the first to peel his shirt off. Ana made it possible by finding some swimming trunks of her ex-husband's, though Dean said he didn't need them.

The water was warm, like liquid gold, sun slanting now, and for a minute Sam couldn't remember why it had seemed so damn important to be anywhere, doing anything. The water caressed him head to toe, washed away all the dirt and the worry and the grief. After a long time, he crawled out of the pool and lay on one of the towels that Ana had brought out for them, listened vaguely to the sounds of water splashing and the rumble of Dean's voice, and the occasional burble of Ana's laughter. He fell asleep.

He couldn't say what woke him, but it was a lack, not a presence; the sun had moved away from the patio area and was now lighting up the oranges like Christmas decorations. The sound of birds, and the buzz of a cicada, the far-off noise of children playing in some neighbor's backyard, but nothing closer than that. He came up on both elbows, shook his head slightly, blurred by the rum and the heat and the stillness of a summer afternoon spent in lazy luxury.

He was alone, though. Two towels were crumpled suggestively on the far side of the pool, clothes strewn in a pile and Sam knew that he should be able to recall what had happened here but that's not what he was thinking about at all. _Where's Dean?_ A question repeated so often as to be meaningless. Truly empty, because Sam knew where Dean was, it was only par for the course, was what always happened when Dean was operating in this particular theater of war. To the winner goes the spoils, but Ana Cortés was too fine to be thought of as anyone's spoil and Sam stood, scooped an ice cube out from the jug and placed it in his mouth, letting the freeze coat his throat before shattering it with his teeth and swallowing the shards.

Turning, he saw Ana regarding him from another doorway — the house curled around the pool in a U-shape — and Sam pushed his hand through hair stiff with pool chemicals. He didn't say anything for a moment, watched her take two steps down from whatever room that door led to — the bedroom of course the bedroom — and cross the garden in bare feet, padding toward him sinuous as a…but he wasn't going to finish that thought, either. Ana was right in front of him, wore a robe, the kind you put on hastily when you weren't wearing anything underneath, came up to mid-chest and she slipped a hand in his, warm against the ice cube's chill.

"Hey," she whispered and although it hadn't been his intention, Sam kissed her, and suddenly that wasn't the only thing he planned on doing. If only they'd been in the car, it would be sweeter, partly because it was Dean's car, party because Sam wanted to, and partly because he was drunk on mint and sun and the weirdness of the weekend, but mostly because he could and she wanted him and he wasn't his damn brother.

He untied the sash around her waist, slipped her white cotton robe to the poolside, so close the end of the belt dropped into the water. Her tongue warmed his mouth, counterpoint to the ice that had come so recently before, and Sam just didn't care, he wanted to screw the daylights out of her in the backseat and wear a straw cowboy hat while he did it.

"Wait," he said and it came out so strangled he barely recognized his own voice. He drew her down, both on their knees, and the cement was warm. "Wait." He took her hand from the back of his neck, and she was naked except for white briefs that sat on her hips like a question mark. "Where's Dean?" He couldn't believe he was asking it, but he was.

She arched an eyebrow, dark eyes flicking to the side. "Inside." She paused, just enough. "You want me to - " And yes, and yes and —

"No," he stammered, caught. "Yes. No!" and suddenly, it was the movie scene he was thinking of — old car, straw hat, sex in the backseat — not the pool, and it wasn't a slow tequila-fueled dance in a beachside hut, not yet, but it was going there fast. It was a _movie_. It was only a movie. "Shit," he tried breathing because he thought it would help. Slowly, he got up from his knees, totally aroused and trying to counsel himself otherwise, but it was futile. Self-control. He was famous for it. _A little self control, Sam._

_Are you sure?_ she said, but in Spanish and although Sam knew a lot of Spanish, it wasn't that he understood her words, or the sad fleeting expression on her face, but it was because below her face in floating white letters, the words appeared and then faded. "Qué?" And _What? _appeared under her chin. A subtitle.

"Oh my God," Sam groaned. At least he was speaking English. He looked down at his chest, but saw nothing. At least he didn't seem to have subtitles. He shook his head again, unwilling to get snared in Lucky's trap. Again. He pulled Ana to her feet, gave her the robe, gestured for her to cover up. Goddamn ghosts and their unfinished business. "Stay here. I'm going to get Dean."

"Dean?" she asked as the word _Who? _appeared and disappeared. Great. She wasn't being subtitled literally. This should be fun.

Sam crossed the pool deck, picking up Dean's clothes as he went, and pushed aside the curtains to the bedroom. Dean lay face down, naked as hairless Chihuahua, asleep. The air conditioning wasn't as strong here, or the open door had nullified it, and the room was limp with heat. Dean looked quite comfortable, actually. Sam wiped his face, turned back to the open doorway, could see Ana staring at him, a wistful look on her face, curious.

"Dean," Sam said. "Dean, wake up!"

Dean stirred and the slack sheets moved as he moved, a study in flow and ebb. _Stop it,_ Sam warned himself, mesmerized by the movement. _Get hold of yourself._ He said his brother's name one more time and Dean's head came up and he rolled over, grabbing sheets as he did so. "Qué?" he said, voice whispery, but his subtitles read, _Where am I?_

Great.

"Dean, we gotta figure out this Lucky thing, okay? Get dressed," and tossed him his clothes. He went outside, needing privacy more than Dean did, but Ana was right there, and she asked if he wanted another drink, but her subtitles read something completely different and Sam once again had to remind himself that this was just a powerful ghost.

Dean came out behind him, said something to Ana that Sam didn't quite catch, but he could read perfectly fine, and he reddened up to his ears.

"Goddamn Lucky," he said feelingly, under his breath. "Dean? Dean!" and Dean disengaged from Ana long enough to look at Sam.

_C'mon, Sam,_ his subtitles said. _Want a swim?_ But a swim had been in the movie too and Sam was at an advantage because he'd seen _Y Tu Mama Tambien,_ knew how the swim turned out — with hurt feelings and recriminations.

"Dean, listen to yourself."

"Por qué?" Dean asked, streamed away in Spanish for a few sentences before catching himself, a look of perplexed horror finally crossing his face. _What the fuck?_ In white, under his stunned expression.

"I know," Sam sighed. "It's Lucky again, and believe me, we don't want to see this through to the end. Ana," and Ana looked back and forth between them, mystified. "Ana, what was Lucky's favorite movie?" because that's what he'd been watching and something within it had given him the strength or the conviction to jump from that balcony where rope and gravity met.

-:-:-

If he concentrated really, really hard, Dean could speak English, but it was like swimming upstream, through honey, and no kidding didn't that swimming pool look pretty damn inviting — and he bit the inside of his mouth, hard. Goddamned stupid ghost and its games. He was so flushed with heat and sex and addled with drink it was hard to concentrate on anything. Ana brushed against him and Dean thought he might pass out.

Sam was yammering away about something and Dean just didn't care, not with the pool and the girl and evening starting to fall like lights going down in a movie theater. Main attraction, no coming soon. It was all right here. The lowering sun was in Sam's eyes and he wasn't wearing a shirt, just some guy's shorts and it was too warm to be thinking about anything that didn't involve some kind of sensation whispering across skin.

"What?" he responded to Sam's hanging question. He'd said it out loud and he couldn't figure out which language he'd said it in. Didn't matter. "His favorite movie? We already know that. Alf told me. It's that Iggy Pop one."

Sam turned to him, caught orange and gold, and licked his lips. Looked as though he was going to explode. "Iggy Pop?" he repeated. "You mean,_ Velvet Goldmine_?" and then he looked like he was going to give up, that it was all too much, that they were lost. _Aw, Sam,_ Dean thought. _Don't worry about it. _

But they'd gotten it wrong, both Sam and Alf. It was a song, not a movie. "What the fuck's _Velvet Goldmine_? What the hell are you talking about? It's a song." But he was pretty sure he'd said that in Spanish, and it was all messed up.

-:-:-

If it was _Velvet Goldmine_, they were so screwed. Sam had only seen it once, late night tv when he couldn't sleep and Jessica could, glam rockers fucking each other, and faking on-stage murders. Jesus. Not a movie that Sam would have picked as Lucky's favorite, not by a long shot. It hadn't even opened when Lucky killed himself, how could it be his favorite?

"An Iggy Pop movie?" he tried to clarify, but Dean wasn't looking at him, he was looking at Ana.

Who said, "_Lust for Life_." Clearly, in both Spanish and in her English subtitle.

_What I said,_ appeared under Dean, the words themselves muffled in Ana's neck.

Sam grabbed Dean's shoulder, pulled him away and Dean looked up questioningly. Smiling.

"Lust for Life?" Sam repeated, looking for affirmation.

Dean nodded, once. "_Lust for Life_." But in English, thank God. No subtitles. They were on to something.

Sam grinned. "Vincent van Gogh?"

Blank stare. "He's an actor?"

"No, no, no. _About_ Van Gogh. With Kirk Douglas." He turned to Ana., and it was like finding the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle under the armchair. He knew the answer to his question before he asked it. "Please, Ana. Did Lucky…did Lucky send you something before he died?"

She was pale, and one hand hovered near her neck and Sam remembered what had happened to her character in _Y Tu Mama Tambien _and was suddenly sad. "Si," she whispered, but there was no subtitle. "I'll get it."

She disappeared into the house and Sam watched her with all kinds of regret. Dean came up beside him, stood silently for a moment, just waiting. On the job, finally, Sam could hope. _Who am I to be wanting Dean to be on the job? Who am I to be wanting to be working like this? _ But they were ephemeral thoughts, wisps, and they left on the late-afternoon breeze, the same one that brought the scent of orange and chlorine.

Ana came back with a small box, one that might have contained a bigger piece of jewelry, a necklace or bracelet. Inside was something brown, curled like a magnolia petal or a slice of dried apple.

"That what I think it is?" Dean asked, professionally, not repulsed, simply checking.

"Lucky's ear?" Sam glanced at Ana, holding the box in her hand like a saint's reliquary, light as a pastry shell. After a moment, she nodded.

Dean was in charge, then. He knew what to do, like a veil had been drawn back and he got to be the bride, had been waiting for it all his life. Sam moved in his shadow, too stunned to feel anything but that soft awe that had been his for all his years. Following Dean's instructions, barked at a low volume because the feature would have started at the Melodrama by now, they salted the ear in Ana's vast kitchen, dripped a quantity of fondue fluid on it and torched it in the toaster over. It disintegrated into a fine black powder, which Ana sprinkled over the orange trees.

She cried the entire time.

For a long while afterward, they sat by the pool. Ana poured a generous measure of tequila into cut crystal tumblers meant for whiskey, and they said nothing. After the moon came up and it got cold, as if by tacit signal, Sam and Dean stood together and each in turn gave Ana a kiss.

In the car, Sam called the Melodrama, spoke with Alf, gave him the all-clear. By midnight they were on the road again, Buttonwillow falling behind them, the glow fading and failing and finally gone.

"So," Dean said, after many miles.

"Yeah," Sam replied, eyes out the window, night sky bright with stars, all the light they needed.

— 30 —

a/n: Kinda like riding a bike! It's been ages since I've written anything, so I was happy enough to (finally) cough this up, even if it ended up feeling somewhat anachronistic. Season One fic. Damn. Next up? I think I have Bear Hunt 3 on the way…for the uninitiated, that's Snuggle Bear, a Supernatural location map of Vancouver (Season Three locations), and the boys in a comic book adventure, god help us all.


End file.
